


Silence

by narsus



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, POV First Person, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-30
Updated: 2012-06-30
Packaged: 2017-11-08 20:33:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 731
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/447259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/narsus/pseuds/narsus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>I have told more lies and caused more mischief with my lips sealed that ever I did with my own tongue.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Avengers belongs to Marvel Studios, Joss Whedon and others. Thor belongs to Marvel Studios, Ashley Edward Miller, Zack Stentz, Don Payne and others.

There is a point where you, eventually, just give up. When everything you’ve fought for pales in the face of reality. I am a magic user: I know just how precarious reality can be. And even then, eventually, the weight of it crushes you. That I will never be a king, even a king of ruins, concerns me little. I never wanted that vile throne anyway. King of Asgard? Truly only a throne fit for fools. King of Jötunheimr? Perhaps it would have suited me better, though even that would have fit considerably ill. King of ruins? Perhaps, that is all I am fit for. Lord of Lies and miserable pranks and childhoods gone awry. A king of the lost and the fallen. God of neglect and silent suffering that, eventually, inevitability, bubbles forth like noxious gas from a bog. Poor Loki. Never the favoured son. Never Asgard’s shining light. The hope for its future. Prince of shadows instead.

You will judge my story in light of my actions of course. You will say that nothing could justify what I have done. What I will again do. You will cease on that: my lack of true contrition. Perhaps you will be right. Perhaps not. I have changed. Everything around me has ceased to spin in its endless dance. Perhaps the dance has ceased to hold meaning for me? I know what it is to be cast aside, to be forsaken, and I no longer struggle futilely against it. I have come to know my place, brother. But I am, strangely, oddly, hysterically, no longer in your shadow for it. Asgard has not welcomed me back with open arms but I have been welcomed after a fashion. And I will break them with my silence.

How strange that all it has taken is the lost of my very self to surmount them all. I no longer wish to challenge you, not for your throne, not for father’s affection, not for any acknowledgement of myself. I am silence on that account and, without any of my prompting, now Asgard fills with whispers. Now the palace gossips lend their tongues to the task of elevating Loki above his brother. They spread the lie that perhaps you have been wrong, that the punishment was too harsh, that I have been broken asunder by your dangerous rage. I take a certain measure of joy in that. How I have begun to turn the tide against you now that I am weary of the fight.

I am exhausted by all of this. I have no strength left in me to do battle. I long only for the silence of the empty gardens or the ancient library. I have no wish to fight any of you, so I have sheathed my weapons, and instead have found that a thousand little liesmiths have risen as my army. Any day now, your father will have to acknowledge it, that the tide begins to turn against you. That soon it may be enough to prevent you from ever taking the throne. If I wished to act the time would be now. You are lucky that I don’t. I have the peace I was seeking and I have no wish to jeopardise that.

 

I had peace. I had silence. Now, once again, it is you who come to shatter it, my brother. Will I not speak? Of course. I must. I cannot stand here mutely when destiny is finally within my grasp.

“Then I will be king.”

My hands close around Gungnir’s shaft and you kneel before me. I have been chosen, above Asgard’s shining star, who now salutes me as his king. What a strange virtue is silence. I have told more lies and caused more mischief with my lips sealed that ever I did with my own tongue.

They say that with great power comes great responsibility on Midgard. They say that kingship is ever a burden on Jötunheimr. They say that a king must be the most cunning of warriors, not necessarily the strongest, on Asgard. Odin has lied to us all. I will not thank you for these lessons, father, but I understand them. The past only ever explains us: it does not justify. Only one of us was born to be a king. You knew this. You tried to change the course of destiny… and you succeeded.

**Author's Note:**

> There might be a terrible pun in there about the Feast of Fools, or at least the traditional English title for the person appointed to preside over it.


End file.
